page_title: United Wireless Telegraph Company
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: United Wireless Telegraph Company / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: The United Wireless Telegraph Company radiotelegraph station (WA), atop the Waldorf-Astoria building in New York City. Via Citizendium
context_page_description: The United Wireless Telegraph Company was the largest radio communications firm in the United States, from its late-1906 formation until its bankruptcy and takeover by Marconi interests in mid-1912. At the time of its demise, the company was operating around 70 land and 400 shipboard radiotelegraph installations — by far the most in the U.S. However, the firm's management had been substantially more interested in fraudulent stock promotion schemes than in ongoing operations or technical development. United Wireless' shutdown, following federal mail fraud prosecution, was hailed for eliminating one of the largest financial frauds of the period. However, its disappearance also left the U.S. radio industry largely under foreign influence, dominated by the British-controlled Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America.
context_section_description: Overall, United Wireless' six-year dominance of U.S. radio communications had a strong negative impact, in part due to the skepticism and disrepute it and other fraudulent U.S. companies brought to the fledgling industry. (Two other major fraudulent firms prosecuted in 1912 were de Forest's Radio Telephone Company, and the Continental Wireless Telephone and Telegraph Company, led by A. Frederick Collins).
  Reviews of the United era were not completely negative. By providing radio equipment and operators below cost to freighters and small passenger vessels, which normally would not have been able to afford the service, United helped save the lives of endangered seafarers now able to summon assistance during emergencies. Lee de Forest, while decrying the excesses of the company's senior management, had good things to say about some of the technical staff, writing: "Charles Galbraith and his corps of honest, capable, hard-working men, engineers, and operators who had been instrumental in building up the American De Forest Wireless Telegraph Company, had gone determinedly ahead developing 'United' along sane and businesslike lines..." In particular, equipment designed by Harry Shoemaker had a good enough reputation so that he was employed by American Marconi when that company took over United Wireless.
  However, a more common opinion about the company appeared in the December 1907 issue of World's Work magazine: "The very word 'wireless' brings a smile to the lips of the Wall Street man... The time may come when the wireless will become suitable for consideration by investors. It will not come until some strong, clean, honest financial interests take charge and utterly eliminate the miserable, fraudulent, unwholesome methods that have marked the whole market history of these issues." John Bottomly, General Manager of American Marconi, assigned the job of incorporating United's assets into the Marconi operations, found the job challenging, reporting that: "A spirit of carelessness seems to have run through the whole conduct of [United] which is almost unparalleled in business history."
caption: Station "WA", the United Wireless radiotelegraph station atop the Waldorf-Astoria building in New York City (1909)[17]
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